What’s the old saying – something about the best laid plans?
Our day started out like all the others… wake up in a hotel, pack up the “go bag,” hit up a gas station to fill up and grab coffees and road snacks, and make our way to the next destination. The gas station stop is especially important. Throughout the trip so far, there have been stretches of the drive where a gas station is either non-existent or doesn’t look like a place we want to stop for miles. So we always start with a full tank, even if we’re still half-full, and when we get to about 100 miles in our range, we stop at the next one we see. There’s a spare gas container on the back for emergencies, but we never want to use it. At today’s stop, we buy a coffee for Nikk, a gas station cappuccino for me (you know the sugar-filled powder stuff that is oh-so tasty?), some bottled waters, and our new favorite breakfast bread – panque con nuez.
Today we were headed to El Salvador! That meant another border crossing, so we got an early start. My plans had allotted three full hours for all border crossings. So far we had spent about an hour to an hour and a half at each one, but it is always better to plan for more time than you think you’ll need. The El Salvador border was a three hour drive from our hotel, and then we had another three hours to San Miguel. So all-in-all, we planned to be on the road for about nine hours.
About two hours into the drive, traffic slowed and eventually came to a halt. No problem – just a little traffic jam, we thought. The highway we were on was a two-lane road, with an exit into a town just off to our left. A few cars trickled past us going the opposite way, so we thought it must be something ahead blocking the road and they were letting one lane go at a time. So we sat. And sat. About 15 minutes later we had moved about two car-lengths. People ahead of us were starting to get out of their cars and chat with one another. This would have been another good time to know Spanish better…
Thanks goodness for small favors – we had great service in this area and unlike many of our fellow-stopped-cars, our A/C worked. Plus, we had a full tank of gas, water, and snacks. It wasn’t ideal, but it sure could have been a lot worse! Another 15 minutes went by and I started looking at Google Maps. I could see the exit to our left led up into a little town and that there were a couple of streets that led back out to the highway ahead of where we were blocked. We decided to wait a little longer to see if we started moving. So we sat some more.
It had now been close to an hour that we had been there. Other cars in the traffic jam had turned into the town or turned around all together. We decided to go for it and head into the town – at least then we’d be moving. Nikk pulled up to the exit and headed into town. Google Maps was doing an awesome job navigating us through the town’s streets. I was guessing that this was a lot more traffic than most of the locals were used to! A few miles in, the route had us turn down a dirt road… no problem in Chivo! It was bumpy and very narrow, but Nikk’s four-wheeling skills paid off and we had no issues. As we came to the end of the dirt road, we were supposed to turn right and the highway should have been right there… instead we found ourselves in another traffic jam. I guess we weren’t the first people to try this and clearly whatever was blocking the highway went further up than we thought. We pulled behind the last car and we sat. Again.
After a few minutes, a nice gentleman came up to the window and Nikk rolled it down. Thankfully, this guy spoke perfect English! He told us what was going on: apparently there was a protest ahead and the protesters were blocking the road going both ways. (Remember all those cool election signs we saw into Guatemala City? I guess elections are divisive and volatile no matter where you go.) He said he didn’t know how long we would be there. Ruh roh.
We turned Chivo off to give him a break and went and sat under some trees with other stuck folks. We talked some more to the English-speaking guy who told us he lived in Seattle and was in town visiting his mother. After a little while, he was talking to someone else and he said that it was clearing up and we had to go. We quickly jumped in Chivo and headed back up the dirt road and back through the town. We don’t know which way the guy took, because we never saw him after that. But after going back through the town, we were literally back to where we started. Maybe a few car-lengths further up the road, but it really hadn’t moved that much. Ugh!
Now I was starting to get concerned. We knew we couldn’t drive at night, so we had a hard deadline of about 6:30 pm to be in a hotel… somewhere. We did some quick figuring and decided that San Miguel – our planned stop for the night – wasn’t going to happen. Even if the traffic moved right that moment and we started driving, we still had to cross the border into El Salvador and that would put us in town at 7 pm. We came up with two plans. Plan A – if traffic started moving by 1 pm, we could make it to San Salvador (about two hours closer than our original destination) and we’d stay there for the night. We’d just have to get a super early start the next day to finish driving through El Salvador and keep to our original schedule. Plan B – if traffic didn’t start moving, we’d have to turn around and go back to Guatemala City and shift the entire rest of our trip back a day. Neither plan was what we wanted.
Thankfully, at about 12:45, the traffic started to move. We had sat there for three full hours. It put us way behind, but we were certain we could make it to San Salvador. As the traffic began to move, I started to work on booking a new place for us for the night and canceled our Air BnB. Again, thank goodness for good service in the area!
Another hour went by and we were finally at the Guatemala/El Salvador border… along with everyone else that was sitting in that traffic jam with us! The lines were long and again we bounced from building to building, but we made it through the border crossing on both sides, in just about three hours.
Without any other issues, we made our way to San Salvador. I had booked us an Air BnB and it was easy to get to without issue. We knew we wouldn’t have a lot of daylight to explore and try to find a place to eat, and quite honestly, we were both exhausted. So just before we got to the Air BnB, we stopped and picked up our second gas station meal of the day. This time it was cup-o-noodles, chips, and more bottled water. Definitely not the glamorous beach-side dining of the early days of our trip!!
We arrived at our Air BnB, happily ate our “dinner,” and quickly went to bed. Tomorrow was already scheduled to be our longest day of the whole trip and today’s adventure meant we had to add another two hours to it. Fingers crossed there would be no more protests tomorrow.
